Now, in the aftermath of aggressive cutbacks, a growing number of airline jobs are more akin to those at a fast-food restaurant. The pay is low, the work is tough and, in a new twist, airlines are having trouble hanging onto workers and finding new ones. - from the Wall Street Journal, 2007
The Star have referred to Nationwide as ‘jinxed’, as though the airline suffered a lot of bad luck and this is the reason it went bang. Uh uh. To have an engine fall off your wing isn’t bad luck, it’s shitty standards. I experienced those crappy standards firsthand when I flew Nationwide way back in 2005 (PE to Jan Smuts – now OR Tambo). My cellphone was stolen out of my bags but the worrying thing was the attitude of the Nationwide staff: “It happens all the time.” That may be true, but you make a damn effort to do something about it, to at least refer the matter to a baggage inspector, I don’t know, but do something. I had to insist on a procedure, on getting some kind of process underway.
In almost every Saturday Star for the past 3 weeks I've read about passengers complaining that the airline overbooks its flights, and makes no arrangements (most of the time) to reimburse those left stranded. Apparently there is no law to rap an airline on the knuckles for doing this, so Nationwide have had a grand old time. The people who have bought Nationwide tickets - a friend of mine who needed to visit Cape Town on a business trip was a victim of exactly this kind of injudicious overbooking - have, to some extent, only themselves to blame. Nationwide has provided cheap flights but shoddy service, and we have known this for some time. To go and buy tickets from the airline after so much has happened really reflects the consumer's propensity for self-indulgence (save money) over common sense (in spite of obvious bad practise). The airline is guilty of doing exactly the same thing.
Now it is once again very evident that Nationwide lacks a sense of service commitment not only to its customers, but to its own staff – both of which have been kept in the dark. Is it so difficult to allow people a few days notice? Apparently, it is.
So let’s not mess about with words like ‘bad luck’. Many many more airlines are going to sink now, SAA is probably the next in line, and if service and business standards aren’t excellent, these airlines are going to sink. And this is not a problem unique to South Africa. It's global. In a world and a market that has been trumpeting the benefits of globalisation, reverse globalisation is also possible, and on a worldwide scale. Right now we see reverse efficiency setting in - where higher energy costs now impact on everyone, everywhere. From fuel prices' impact on airlines, to food prices impact on your weekend. A regional problem is also a worldwide one, meaning a solution is going to be pretty hard to find anywhere.
The prospects for air travel as a whole look bleak. We will see a lot of mergers. Probably we will end up with very few super carriers. I'd like to see the best carriers survive, like Singapore Airlines, but we maynot have that luxury. In fact, we're likley to have fewer and fewer. People will pay a premium to get themselves somewhere else in the world from now on. Meanwhile the budget airlines may or may not eviscerate the main players. This will depend on whether the main players cut their own costs and change their service and brand proposition (to resemble the budget players). The future of airlines will have to budget, and a small niche market for the elites. It will be nothing like it is today. To fly in 10 years will be something exceptional for suburbia’s children.
More:
Rising costs reshaping air travel across the USA
Airlines' merger would help offset cost of fuel
Cut in seat capacity, other efficiencies are considered
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